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5 ways to slow down and embrace your holiday stories

by Katie Clemons

Storycatcher and award winning journal crafter Katie Clemons helps tens of thousands of folks document and celebrate their stories with her beloved mother child journals, personal diaries, and complimentary journal tutorials at Gadanke. She also blogs at Making This Home.

This season isn’t about the stuff and how much we can cram into our lives. It’s the people.

You and I have a mental list of all the awesome things we want to do this holiday season. It all stems from memories and traditions in our families. For me, there’s making Vanilkové Rohlíčky (vanilla crescents), a Czech Christmas cookie my husband’s grandma made as he grew up. There’s goofing off in the snow with everyone above. There’s cooking my very first Thanksgiving turkey as my mom coaches me in my home.

The problem—as we all know so well—is that this time of year can get really overwhelming in our search for the perfect holiday.

I realize that I could probably just skip the turkey this Thanksgiving and keep serving a vegetarian meal. But deep in my heart, I know. It isn’t about having meat on the table. It’s about creating that one beautiful day that brings our family together. It’s about the memories of that day – seeing my grandma teach my mom how to roast a turkey thirty years ago, watching my grandpa carve it at the head of the table. Thanksgiving is about creating foods that have been favorites for generations. It’s about gratitude.

Deep in your heart, you know, too. You know the things that matter most. You’re crafting a series of traditions and legacies that future generations are going to continue. That’s a version of us worth celebrating and capturing.

The greatest thing is when these traditions are celebrated and documented. Here are four ways to slow down and start capturing the stories of your holiday.

1. When you gather for a meal, have everyone share something she’s thankful for or a holiday memory she loves.

2. Keep an ongoing scrapbook.

Scrapbookers around the world begin a mammoth-sized project of documenting their holidays in a project called December Daily. Led by Ali Edwards, they start scrapbooking a page a day from December 1 to 25th. It’s a lot of work, but something you could easily scale down. Imagine the stories they are capturing!

3. Keep a more relaxed, reflective holiday journal.

Curl up with a cup of hot chocolate. Maybe invite the kids to join you. And keep a holiday journal. You can journal about specific days and events that year. You could tuck in wish lists and shopping lists. Reflect on memories of past holidays. This holiday journal from Gadanke offers a lot of prompts to keep you inspired and places to store Christmas cards and programs. Imagine pulling out Christmas journals from past years. (It’s something my mom and I do every year, and we’re always amazed by the things we have forgotten… things we were so sure we wouldn’t forget!)

4. Create a memory box.

Hang onto all the bits and pieces from your season—from programs and wrapping paper scraps to and trinkets and baby’s firsts. Print off photos. Tuck everything away and store it with your holiday decorations. To keep everything together, you could order a pretty box with family photos and names on it. Your kids could decorate an old cereal box or shoe box. You could just use a simple large envelope.

5. Make a habit of telling your kids your Christmas stories.

There are hundreds of holiday books to chose from. But why not set those aside some nights? Tell some of your own stories. Describe family traditions and memories from your childhood. Talk about favorite recipes and things that your family does today that you did when you were little. Ask grandparents to do the same. Our kids will love that stuff!

See those Christmas cookies your kids made? You know – the ones that have more frosting and candies than actual cookies? (Embrace holiday imperfection, right?!) Well do you remember how that exact recipe came to be a family tradition or why you chose the sprinkles and candies? Share it this season. Imagine the time capsules of stories and memories you could create.

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Comments

Every year around our Thanksgiving table we pause to have everyone (young and old) share what they are most thankful for, for the year. It is so neat to hear peoples hearts open up and reflect on God’s blessings – whether big or small. I do love your idea of a Thanksgiving journal and might suggest this as a new “tradition” this year. Great post!

I’ve been surprised by just how much my kids loooove hearing the stories from my husband’s and my childhoods. (Especially my husband–he’s a great storyteller!) I hadn’t thought about how meaningful stories from the past can be this time of year, especially–thank you!

Great suggestions. I’ve started small versions of some of these projects (a journal, a holiday notebook/scrapbook, but am looking forward to trying to use them more consistently this year. And how true, that now that we are the heads of our families that we are trying to recreate the memories from our own Christmases…likely though, we don’t remember the stress our poor parents were probably experiencing because they never told us!! Hoping to find balance this Christmas.

uh oh…did my last comment disappear? Maybe it will show up…if not, wanted to say LOVEd your ideas. Thank you for sharing…and would LOVE to see a picture of your house made from recycled material…how cool!!

I love the idea of the holiday journal. I try to cherish every moment with our children while they are small, but sometimes it is hard to slow down. Another idea I plan to use this year is to ask our daughters to draw their own memories of Christmas, so we can insert those into the Christmas book. My six-year-old will write her own story, and I feel sure that 20 years from now we will all LOVE to read that!

We have a Christmas card album that I started the first year we were married. It’s a beautiful, handmade paper album, and I put our annual photo Christmas card in it each year. This is year 12, and it is fun to flip through and see how our family has evolved – from our wedding, to pets, to pregnancy, to babies and now to school aged kids.

These are all fantastic suggestions, and I’ll be taking all of them to heart this season.

I never got around to recording holiday memories until I found you and your blog and Gadanke! I’m so thankful to have the Christmas journal becuase it’s much less intimdating than a scrapbook. It’s easy to just take 5 minutes here or there to jot a memory before that memory fades!

I was having a discussion with my 29 year old daughter recently. She has 6 children of her own now and we were discussing how she doesn’t remember any of the gifts she received as a child. What she remembers are funny things we did, traditions we tried, the memories that were made, not the presents that were wrapped. We are trying to keep this in mind as we create traditions now as the grandparents of another generation.
I love the idea of the journal!
Bernice

I’m already a memory box fan, but I’m totally going to try and do something more with the stash of Christmas cards we’ve been collecting over the years. Such a simple (and free) thing to create with this season!

One more enthusiastic YES for the signed tablecloths! I do not have the needle skills to embroider the names but oh, it is so lovely to see the signatures of those we love and miss around our table when we gather again.